by Unknown
For a moment, Rachel was too shocked to do anything. She wasn't even sure what she was witnessing, or indeed if the scene that was being enacted before her eyes was really happening. It was a bright day, and concentrating on Rosemary's diminutive form in the face of a lowering sun had caused spots to dance before her eyes.
She blinked several times, and as she did so the horseman swung his mount around to head back the way he had come.
There had been no cry of protest from the girl, and Rachel could only assume that she knew her rescuer. But that didn't absolve her of the damage she had done to Rachel's car, and, cursing her narrow skirt, Rachel clambered over the wall.
'Wait!'
Her cry hardly carried across the open moorland, competing as it did with thrushes and curlews, and the distinctive call of a blackbird. But her actions must have caught the man's attention, for he turned his head to look at her and she saw his face for the first time.
Dear God, it was Matt she realised disbelievingly, the knowledge hitting her with a force she had never expected. For a moment it was as if the last ten years had rolled away, and her heart was pounding as it used to do every time she saw him.
Nothing in her experience had prepared her for the shock of seeing him again, and although she fought to hold on to her composure she was suddenly trembling with the violence of her emotions.
But with this awareness came another shattering conclusion.
The child—Rosemary—must be his daughter.
Her stomach clenched and her mouth dried. His daughter! The daughter he and Barbara had had soon after his divorce from Rachel herself.
But it was sobering, too, and as the proud stallion and his equally proud riders picked their way towards her she managed to salvage a little dignity. But never in her wildest dreams had she expected to meet Matt in circumstances like these, and she prayed she had the strength to hide how shaken it had left her.
She had no idea when Matthew had realised who she was.
But as the enormous horse came nearer his guarded expression revealed that he had definitely identified her now. Not that that was any consolation. It was perfectly obvious that he was not pleased at meeting her like this. The grey eyes that she remembered so well were glacially distant, and the hands wrapped around the reins were taut within his wrist-length leather gloves.
Rosemary, meanwhile, was looking as if she was torn between the urge to confess her side of the story before Rachel had a chance to speak, and the equally strong suspicion that by saying nothing she could deny everything. You could almost see her weighing the pros and cons of confession, Rachel thought bitterly. No wonder Mrs Reed had refrained from making any derogatory remarks about the girl. The Conroys owned the vast proportion of the land hereabouts, and, like many of the cottages in Rothside, the lease on the store was owned by them.
The horse and his riders had reached her now, and Rachel thought how typical it was that she should be put at such a disadvantage. Her height had never put her on eye-level terms with Matthew, but on foot she had never had to look up at him this way. As it was, the ignominy of her position was not lost on his daughter, and Rosemary's lips curled maliciously as her trailing shoe drew temptingly close to Rachel's chin.
Deciding the best method of defending her position was by ignoring it, Rachel looked up at him with what she hoped was a cool, unflustered gaze. 'Hello, Matt,' she said evenly, briefly enjoying Rosemary's startled deflation. Evidently it had never occurred to her that Rachel might know her father.
She was not a pretty child, thought Rachel dispassionately, fleetingly aware of the similarities between her and her father.
They were both dark, of course—dark-haired, and dark-skinned—but whereas Matthew's features were strong, and still disturbingly attractive, Rosemary's face was thin and decidedly sulky.
All the same, it was difficult to make any real assessment of the child with Matthew looking down at her. A different Matthew, yet still so familiar, despite the flecks of grey in his hair and the broader contours of his body. The Matthew she remembered had looked approachable, good-natured—not remote and brooding like this man. The Matthew she had fallen in love with would never have regarded her with quite that look of detachment, through eyes that, even narrowed, conveyed his raw dislike.
But Rosemary could not see her father's withdrawn expression, and his polite, 'Rachel,' in answer to her greeting was a cause for consternation.
'Daddy, I didn't do it!' she exclaimed, without waiting any longer for Rachel to incriminate her. 'It wasn't me! It was someone else! Oh, tell her I couldn't do a thing like that
'
Matthew drew his gaze from Rachel's face to look down at his daughter. 'What?' he demanded blankly. 'What are you talking about?' His eyes shifted unwillingly back to the young woman beside him. 'Do you know something about this?'
Rachel took a deep breath. 'Yes,' she admitted, half unwillingly now, and with a grim exclamation Matthew swung himself down from the saddle.
The horse shifted uncertainly at the sudden shift of weight from his back, but Matthew's hand on his muzzle swiftly reassured him. 'Rosemary?' he said, with an unmistakable inflection in his voice. 'Perhaps you'd explain. I'm waiting to hear what this is all about.'
Rachel expelled her breath warily. The annoyance of Rosemary's attack on her car was fast losing significance.
Indeed, the more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed for her to have come charging after the girl, when she was so unsuitably attired for such an expedition. As it was, her heels were scuffed, her tights were laddered, and whatever conviction she had started out with was rapidly diminishing.
'It wasn't my fault --' began Rosemary again, defensively, and, realising this was getting more complicated by the minute, Rachel intervened.
'We had—a—a misunderstanding,' she said, meeting the girl's sullen stare with determined coolness. Then, sensing that Matthew was looking at her again, she transferred her gaze to the open neck of his dark blue sweatshirt. 'It was something and nothing.' She shrugged. 'I didn't know who she was.'
'Would that have made a difference?'
His voice was clipped and without expression, and Rachel knew a rekindling sense of resentment. They were both the same, she thought. Father and daughter alike. They were both treating her with the kind of arrogant contempt more suitably reserved for an inferior, and, although moderation warred with defiance, she refused to let either of them walk all over her.
'No,' she replied now, turning to make her rocky retreat over the pile of stones. She refused to stand there and argue with him like some recalcitrant minion. She would pay for the repairs to her car, and to hell with him. She had no intention of begging compensation from the Conroys.
But, as she struggled to climb back into the lane, and her feet slid ignominiously over the rocks, Rosemary giggled. It was a boastful little sound that jarred Rachel's senses, and she was unbearably tempted to turn back and take up the attack. Her fingers itched to wipe the triumphant smile from the girl's face, but she resisted the impulse. Discretion is the better part of valour, she repeated to herself, like a mantra, and concentrated on getting over the wall and safely on to solid ground.
'Rachel!'
Matthew's harsh use of her name was briefly compelling, scraping over her nerves like a rough hand on soft skin. How many times had she heard him use that word in just that way when he had been making love to her? she wondered unwillingly. How many times had he been compelled to abandon whatever plans he had to haul her back into his arms and lose himself in her willing body? Her hands clenched. Just as he had lost himself in Barbara's body, she appended bitterly.
She mustn't forget that.
By the time she had slithered down into the ditch at the other side of the wall, Matthew was waiting for her. His booted feet had made short shrift of the crumbling rocks, and he offered her his hand to breach the gap between the ditch and the road.
Pretending she hadn't seen it, Rachel made he
r own progress up on to the road, and then stopped to make another examination of her appearance. Damn! she swore. There were at least half a dozen runs in her stockings now, and her hands were scraped and sore. So much for revenge, she thought frustratedly. All she had succeeded in doing was making a complete fool of herself.
'Rachel!'
Matthew's hand on her arm would have swung her round to face him, but she shrugged it off and started back down the lane.
To hell with the Conroys— all the Conroys, she thought childishly. She should never have agreed to come here. It had definitely been a mistake.
'Rachel, for heaven's sake!' Matthew's tone was distinctly angry now and, after ordering Rosemary to get down from the horse, he came striding after her. 'You might as well tell me.
You didn't come after her just for the fun of it.'
Rachel halted reluctantly. 'It's not important,' she declared coldly, angry herself that her quickening breath wasn't just a result of her exertions. 'I've got to go. Uncle Geoff will be wondering where I am.'
'To hell with Uncle Geoff!' retorted Matthew unfeelingly, glancing back over his shoulder to assure himself that Rosemary had indeed done as he had said. Then, transferring his gaze back to Rachel, he arched dark brows. 'Well?'
'I'm not a child, Matt.' Rachel resented his highhanded demand that he should be put in the picture. 'As I said, it's not important. Now—if you'll excuse me
'
'Rachel!'
Instinctively he reached out and grasped her wrist, his action born of his frustration, but Rachel was furious. Lifting her eyes to his, she forced herself to stare him down and, after a pregnant moment, he released her.
'Goodbye, Matt,' she said distantly, and, refusing to prolong a situation that she was no longer certain she could control, she stalked stiffly away.
CHAPTER THREE
'I'LL see you back at the vicarage.'
Rachel stood beside the long black saloon that was waiting to take her aunt and uncle back to Rothmere House, cool and remote in her black suede skirt and matching jacket. The sombre colour of her outfit drew attention to the silvery lightness of her hair, and, although she kept it shorter these days, and swept back behind her ears, its paleness accentuated the unnatural pallor of her cheeks.
She knew she looked pale. She could feel it. The service in the village church had been more of a strain than she could have realised, and the awareness of Matthew and his mother in the pew in front of her had added to her discomfort. What had he been thinking? she wondered. What feelings of grief and remorse had filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else?
Sadness, of course, and pity; but was he as heartbroken as Aunt Maggie had maintained? Somehow she doubted it. The man she had met out on the fells had not looked heartbroken. Bitter, perhaps, and angry. But not torn by any overwhelming pangs of emotional anguish. And why should she expect anything else, after what he had done to her?
The Bishop of Norbury had conducted the service, leaving Uncle Geoff to mourn the loss of his daughter in private. And afterwards Barbara's remains had been buried in the family plot in the adjoining graveyard. The bishop himself had read the eulogy, before the heavy, iron-bound casket had been lowered into the ground, and the sound of Aunt Maggie's weeping had echoed off the surrounding headstones.
But now the ceremony was over, and a long stream of limousines was already transporting family and friends back to the house, where a cold buffet was waiting. Personal respects would be endorsed, sympathy would be offered, and then everyone would depart about their own business, guiltily relieved that their responsibility was over.
'What do you mean?' Rachel's aunt demanded now, putting aside her grief to lean out of the car window and gaze up at her niece with an aggravated impatience. 'You'll see us back at the vicarage? What is that supposed to mean?'
'Please, Maggie!' Geoffrey Barnes put a detaining hand on his wife's arm, but she shook him off.
'Stop it, Geoff!' she exclaimed irritably. 'Well, Rachel? I'm waiting for an answer.'
Rachel glanced about her; unwillingly aware that their exchange was attracting curious eyes. Not least because their car was holding up at least half a dozen other limousines.
'I think it would be better if I went straight back to the vicarage, Aunt Maggie,' she responded quickly. 'I— well, it's not as if I'd be a welcome visitor at the house, and I'm sure I'd save us all a deal of embarrassment if I left you and Uncle Geoff to accept everyone's condolences alone.'
Her aunt's face suffused with colour. 'You should have thought of that before you came here,' she hissed angrily, her grief apparently taking second place to her indignation. 'But you had to come, didn't you? You had to have your—your pound of flesh!'
'Aunt Maggie!'
Rachel was horrified that her aunt should believe she had come here with some perverted desire to bear witness to her cousin's demise. Whatever Barbara had done, she had not deserved to die, and Rachel felt only pity now for the woman who had destroyed her marriage.
'Maggie, for goodness' sake!'
Geoffrey Barnes's face mirrored his distaste at this unpleasant scene, and Rachel felt the unaccustomed sting of tears behind her eyes. Dear God, and she had felt obliged to come here because she had thought—foolishly, she now realised—that they needed her.
'I don't care.' Her aunt was unrepentant. 'She's here now, and I will not have people saying that she wasn't invited to the house. How do you think that would look? People talk, Geoffrey. Before you know it, they'd be saying that Matt didn't invite her because he's afraid to see her
'
'Oh, Aunt Maggie!' Rachel was almost speechless with emotion. 'That—that is absolutely—ridiculous!'
'I know it and you know it, but they don't,' retorted her aunt grimly. 'Now, will you get in the car and stop behaving as if your presence at Rothmere had any importance—any importance at all?'
Rachel hesitated, but to argue any further would only aggravate an already embarrassing situation, and when her aunt thrust open the door she unwillingly stepped inside. But, once installed on one of the folding seats facing her aunt and uncle on the leather banquette opposite, she spoke to her uncle.
'What do you think, Uncle Geoff?' she asked him tensely.
'Don't you feel it would be better if I didn't accompany you?'
'Geoff
' began her aunt warningly, but for once Geoffrey Barnes didn't need his wife's admonishments.
'I suspect Maggie may be right,' he ventured, to Rachel's dismay, running a nervous finger around the inside of his clerical collar. 'Rothside isn't like London, Rachel. And people do gossip, I regret to say. Your coming here is bound to have caused conjecture, and avoiding speaking to Matthew will only fuel the fires of speculation.'
Rachel caught her breath. 'Then why did you invite me?'
'You might well ask,' declared her aunt darkly, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.
'I invited you because Barbara is—was—your cousin, and I saw this as a way to resolve our differences,' declared Geoffrey Barnes firmly. 'Rachel, when your father thrust the responsibility of your upbringing upon us all those years ago, I did not see it only as a physical duty. You are our niece, whatever else. Can't we forgive the past?'
Rachel moistened her lips and looked out of the window of the car. Forgive the past? she echoed silently. How was that possible? Obviously Aunt Maggie forgave nothing, and, for herself, she wanted no part of any attempt at reconciliation with the Conroys.
'You do see how it would look, don't you, Rachel?' her uncle persisted now, and Rachel managed a slight inclination of her head in his direction. But inside she was a churning mass of nervous tension that not even her media training could totally control.
The procession of cars was sweeping through the stone gates that marked the southern boundary of Rothmere House now, and Rachel's fingers clenched around her handbag as the remembered lawns and paddocks opened out beside her.
Rothside had been recognisabl
e to her, but the grounds of Rothmere were unbearably familiar. Yet, if it hadn't changed in over two hundred years, why should she have expected it to change in only ten? Didn't it only go to prove that no one was indispensable? The passing of Rachel Barnes Conroy hadn't even ruffled the surface of the lake that lapped the pebbled shore below the house.
The house itself was solidly built of lakeland stone, with long mullioned windows glinting in the late afternoon sunlight.
It was built on three floors, with many turrets and chimneys, and Rachel had always thought it had many of the characteristics of one of the fortified manor houses of earlier times, but Matthew had declared it was because it had been added to so many times that it had lost its own identification. But, in spite of everything, Rachel had loved the house, and seeing it again now was a particularly painful experience.
Watkins was waiting on the gravelled forecourt, to open car doors and welcome his employer's guests to Rothmere, and his old eyes widened in some amazement when Rachel stepped first from the limousine.
'Why—it's Miss Rachel!' he exclaimed. And then, recollecting the circumstances, his lined features sobered.
'Um—good afternoon, Mrs— Miss Barnes.'
'Rachel will do,' she responded gently, acknowledging his look of gratitude as she turned away to draw a deep breath.
Well, here she was, she thought tensely. Let battle commence!
Her aunt and uncle were climbing out of the limousine now, and, meeting Aunt Maggie's accusing gaze, Rachel guessed she had witnessed the exchange between herself and Watkins. But what of it? she asked herself defensively. She had always had a soft spot for the elderly butler, and of all the servants at Rothmere he had been the first to accept her as Matthew's wife.
If only Watkins were the only one to meet.
In the event, she was able to join the subdued group of people thronging the hall of Rothmere House without incident.
Remaining behind her aunt and uncle, she attracted little immediate attention, and only when they made their way across the room to speak to Matthew and his mother did she feel the urge to hang back. But Aunt Maggie was having none of that, and, grasping her by the arm, she forced her to accompany them.
